Easy, Does It? When Disruptive Resistance to Autocratization Trumps Over Moderation: the Cases of Albania and North Macedonia

Recent scholarship on opposition to autocratization suggests that disruptive institutional and extra-institutional strategies pursuing radical goals—such as forcing an incumbent’s resignation—tend to backfire and accelerate democratic erosion, whereas moderate strategies respecting the electoral calendar are more likely to halt autocratization. This article challenges this emerging consensus through a comparative analysis of Albania under Edi Rama and North Macedonia under Nikola Gruevski, two cases that display opposite outcomes despite employing broadly similar repertoires of resistance, including parliamentary boycotts and mass mobilization. The article argues that the effectiveness of resistance strategies depends less on whether their goals are radical or moderate, and more on how they are embedded within opposition parties’ broader strategic frameworks and internal dynamics. It advances a two-step argument. First, both institutional and extra-institutional resistance—particularly when disruptive—must be led by political parties and nested within a coherent meta-strategy explicitly oriented toward restoring electoral democracy. Second, drawing on the legal concept of exhaustion, opposition leaders must consistently demonstrate that less disruptive avenues have been rendered ineffective due to institutional capture or imminent democratic breakdown. Such consistency is crucial to maintaining internal unity, mobilizing societal actors, and securing international support. The argument is substantiated through a comparative case study of the Democratic Party (DP) in Albania and the Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM), drawing on 20 semi-structured interviews with opposition politicians, activists, and experts, as well as party documents, electoral data, media sources, and secondary literature. The analysis shows that in Albania, resistance failed because the DP leadership lost control over extra-institutional mobilization and became absorbed in internal power struggles, undermining claims of democratic breakdown. In contrast, the SDSM successfully articulated and defended its radical strategy as necessary and temporary, grounded in exhaustion, thereby sustaining unity and mobilizing domestic and international backing that culminated in democratic reversal. The study contributes to the literature on opposition to autocratization by proposing a framework that explains when radical resistance can succeed, highlighting the importance of intra-party dynamics, and advancing understanding of parliamentary boycotts and resistance strategies in the Western Balkans.